[A graduate of
Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Toronto, Anne-Marie
Finn is an internet researcher in Toronto and an executive member of the
Canadian Chapter, Transylvanian Society of Dracula.]
Bram
Stoker’s Dracula has accomplished something that almost no other novel
has ever done: it has been thoroughly embraced by Western popular culture. From
Halloween costumes to breakfast cereal, from books to movies, to a multitude of
merchandise, “Dracula” is everywhere. The title is one of the most instantly
recognized in the history of publishing and readily conjures up the image of a
black-caped villain who preys upon members of an unsuspecting British society.
This is the image most often associated with the character but it does not
derive from Stoker. It originated on the stage. The purpose of this discussion
is to examine the transmission of the text of Dracula from the novel
into its first stage adaptations.
Bram Stoker was quite familiar with the conventions of the stage.
He worked as acting manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London for seventeen years
and was closely associated with the well-known actor Sir Henry Irving (Skal,
Introduction vii). In 1897, Stoker went to the trouble of actually writing a
stage version of Dracula in order to protect the copyright of the plot
from unauthorized stage adaptations. According to some sources, Stoker had
tried on several occasions to convince Henry Irving to be part of such a
production (Skal, Introduction viii; Ludlam 123). However, upon seeing Stoker’s
copyright adaptation performed at the Lyceum, Henry Irving was rumored to
pronounce it “dreadful” (Ludlam 123). The actor would never play Dracula and Dracula
was never again staged under Stoker’s supervision at the Lyceum or any other
theatre.
Stoker died in 1912 but Dracula, in proper vampire fashion,
would find life after death as a theatrical production. In 1924, having failed
to convince anyone else to attempt it, Hamilton Deane, English actor/producer,
approached Bram Stoker’s widow, Florence, for the right to produce Dracula
on stage (Ludlam 171-72). At this time, Florence was in the middle of a
difficult legal battle concerning Nosferatu, the unauthorized German
film version of Dracula. According to David J Skal in Hollywood
Gothic, she was in a desperate financial situation, with Dracula as
nearly her only real means of support, and she saw the financial potential of
Hamilton Deane's production. She also recognized the lack of quality in the
production, which had been written in only four weeks, but as Skal sums it up,
“she needed the money” (59).
Dracula: the Vampire Play
toured successfully in England from 1924-1927. American producer Horace
Liveright witnessed for himself the phenomenon of Dracula (Skal, Hollywood
Gothic 65) and saw its potential, though he was unimpressed by Deane’s
writing. He solicited a second playwright, John L Balderston, to rewrite the
dialogue. Of course, they would first need Florence Stoker’s permission.
Balderston acted as mediator between Stoker and Liveright (whom she disliked)
and succeeded in securing the rights for the play. Balderston claimed that
though he used virtually none of Deane’s original dialogue (about twenty
lines), he only included his name as playwright when he saw that the production
could be successful (Skal, Hollywood Gothic 81). Liveright then produced
Dracula: The Vampire Play in Three Acts for Broadway.[1]
The audience member going to see either of the plays and expecting
to see Bram Stoker’s Dracula would have been sorely disappointed. In the
transmission process from novel to stage play characters, scenes, dialogue and
narration were all altered to become almost unrecognizable. Naturally, for a
stage presentation of the novel to be possible, certain limits had to be
imposed upon Stoker’s text. However, how much of Dracula can disappear
before the reader is no longer able to recognize the original novel? For
instance, a novel of Dracula’s length cannot be transferred to the stage
intact due to the simple constraint of time. One would therefore expect much of
the extraneous action to disappear or become condensed on the stage. Right
away, then, the transmission of the text becomes problematic.
In order to understand the significance of some of the
alterations, and to see what happened to the text, it is necessary at this
point to present a brief summary of the characters and plot of Stoker’s Dracula.
The text itself consists of twenty-seven chapters and some 445 pages[ii]
written in epistolary form. The action revolves around approximately nine
principal characters and the majority of these characters contribute their
voices to the epistolary narrative in diaries, journals, letters and other
forms.
The novel opens with the narrative of Jonathan Harker, a young
solicitor who is enroute to Transylvania to conduct legal affairs for Count
Dracula. Dracula wishes to purchase property in England with the intention of
moving there. Upon arrival at the Count’s castle, Harker discovers oddities
about his host, both in his appearance and his actions. It is important to point out that the title
character, at least according to Stoker’s text, is very different from the
vampire which would appear on the stage. Harker describes Dracula in great
detail:
Within stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white
moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of
colour about him anywhere.... His face was a strong, a very strong -- aquiline,
with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils.... His
eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose.... The mouth ... was
fixed and rather cruel looking with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded
over the lips ... his ears were pale, pale and at the tops extremely
pointed.... The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.... Strange to
say there were hairs in the center of the palm. The nails were long and fine,
and cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me,
I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a
horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not
conceal. (23-26)
Harker
soon realizes that Dracula is a diabolical creature intent on spreading his
evil to England. However, he is unable to warn anyone since he is left
imprisoned in the castle as the vampire makes his way to England by sea.
The action of the novel switches to Whitby, England, where Mina
Murray (Harker’s fiancée) and her friend Lucy Westenra are vacationing. Three
friends, the psychiatrist John Seward, the aristocrat Arthur Holmwood (later
Lord Godalming), and the American, Quincey P Morris, have all proposed to Lucy and
she has accepted Holmwood. Seward is head of an insane asylum and has been
recording the odd behavior of a patient, R M Renfield, who is fascinated with
(and eats) flies, spiders, and birds. This character foreshadows the arrival of
Dracula and, if one reads the novel as Christian allegory, he acts as a kind of
“anti-John-the-Baptist” to Dracula’s “anti-Christ.” While Lucy and Mina are in
Whitby, Dracula arrives by way of a shipwreck. Shortly afterward, Lucy begins
sleepwalking and falls strangely ill, unknowingly becoming Dracula’s victim.
Mina leaves her friend to go to her fiancé (Harker) who has made it out of
Transylvania and resurfaced in Buda-Pesth.
In London, Lucy fights for her life and Dr Seward enlists the help
of his friend from Amsterdam, Professor Abraham Van Helsing. Van Helsing
recognizes the nature of her illness and prescribes blood transfusions to help
her. He also makes use of garlic and
crosses to protect her but his attempts are in vain since Lucy succumbs to the
vampire’s attacks. It is important to note that, up to this point, none of the
characters have seen the vampire. Mina, now married to Harker, realizes that he
has endured some horrendous experience and they return to England to discover
that her friend has died. Upon their arrival, Harker sees and recognizes
Dracula, who has grown young. Van Helsing reads Harker’s journal, which finally
gives him the identity of the vampire. It is revealed that Lucy is now a
vampire as well and so Van Helsing, along with Seward, Holmwood, and Morris, go
to her grave and destroy her. Once this has been accomplished the characters
are free to devote their time to hunting Dracula.
The characters make Seward’s asylum their base of operations and
bring together all their information (from the various journals, letters,
newspaper articles, etc). Van Helsing acts as their leader, explaining to them
what vampires are and how to destroy them. The vampire hunters (Van Helsing,
Seward, Harker, Holmwood and Morris) seek out Dracula’s lairs and make them uninhabitable
for the vampire. Mina is excluded from the action of the vampire hunters and
thus becomes Dracula’s next victim. Renfield is able to warn the men about
Dracula, and dies for this betrayal, but they are unable to save Mina from
becoming initiated by Dracula. The hunters are now fighting for her soul, since
if they do not destroy Dracula, she will become like him. Dracula then attempts
to flee England and return to Transylvania. The other characters pursue him, by
land and sea, and finally defeat him just before he reaches his castle. Quincey
Morris is killed at this climax, along with Dracula.
It is from this textual source that Hamilton Deane adapted his
stage play (and it is Deane’s stage play that was in turn adapted by
Balderston). Many elements from Stoker’s novel survive intact, but become
almost unrecognizable due to the nature of Deane’s presentation. The remnants
of the plot appear scattered and out of sequence throughout the text of the
stage play since Deane concentrates his adaptation on the action from the
second half of Stoker’s text. That is, his stage play includes many plot
details and actual text from approximately ten chapters of Dracula,
starting with chapter fourteen and going through to chapter twenty-three. There
are elements of Stoker's story from earlier parts of the novel that make their
way into Deane’s adaptation, but they are taken out of sequence and associated
with the wrong characters. For the most part, however, the first twelve and the
final six chapters of Stoker’s text have completely disappeared. Due to Deane’s
surgery, the text of over half of Stoker’s novel has not survived the
transition from novel to stage play. In his version of the vampire play,
Balderston does nothing to correct these omissions. In fact, as will be
discussed, he compounds the problems of Deane’s text and further removes Dracula
from Stoker’s original version.
In Deane’s play, for instance, as the action opens in Harker’s
drawing room (which is never a scene in the novel), Seward and Harker discuss
the strange illness which has befallen Harker’s wife Mina. They are
anticipating the arrival of Abraham Van Helsing, who has been called in on the
case. As has already been illustrated in the plot summary, Van Helsing is
called in to help Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker does not fall ill until much
later. In order to accommodate the action of the stage play, Deane has done
some creative reworking of the plot and of the characters. Mina Harker thus
becomes a combination of Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker. She suffers as Lucy
does, Van Helsing intervenes as he does for Lucy in the novel with blood
transfusions and garlic protections, but she is attacked as Mina is and
survives like Mina does.
For the most part, the characters remain essentially similar
between the novel and Deane’s play, though several significant alterations have
occurred. Unlike the novel, the major characters in Deane’s play (excluding
Dracula, Van Helsing and Renfield) have all been friends for years. As Seward
expresses it, “in fact, the Harkers, Lord Godalming, Miss Morris ... Lucy
Westera [sic] and myself have for some years past formed a little ‘coterie’ of
our own....” (Deane and Balderston 12-13). This change is due to the fact that
Deane has picked up the story in medias res, at a point where the characters
all know each other. In other words, he changes the relationships to suit his
adaptation. Another extremely strange thing has happened. “Quincy [sic] Morris”
has undergone a gender switch. Morris is
no longer the strapping male Texan who sports a Winchester rifle and a bowie
knife and who sacrifices himself for his friends in the novel. He is now a she,
but she still carries a gun.
Another major change has occurred with the physical representation
of Dracula himself. A cultured, courtly continental dressed in evening clothes
and a cape has replaced the pasty, old, unattractive villain dressed completely
in black. This is particularly significant since it is this image of Dracula
and not Stoker’s that has become the image most often associated with the
character. Dracula is also out of place in Harker’s drawing room since, except
for the opening sequence in Transylvania where he interacts with Harker (and
which Deane has deleted), he rarely appears in the action of the novel. This is
mostly due to the nature of the epistolary narrative since Dracula does not
contribute to the collaboration with his own account of the events. He is
emancipated in Deane’s play, however, and is able for the first time ever, to
interact freely with the other characters without a second glance from any of
them.
Deane has created a problem for his adaptation, however, by
allowing Dracula to interact freely. Since Van Helsing does not have access to
Harker’s Transylvania journal, and hence the information that Dracula is a
vampire, the playwright must invent a situation that leads the professor to
suspect Dracula. However, Deane does not rely on his own imagination for this
situation. Instead, he relies on Stoker’s text. The following is an excerpt
from Stoker, which is recorded in Harker’s journal from Transylvania:
I had hung my shaving glass by the window, and was beginning to
shave. Suddenly I felt a hand on my
shoulder, and heard the Count’s voice saying to me, “Good morning.” I started
for it amazed me that I had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass
covered the whole room behind me. In starting I had cut myself slightly.... The
whole room behind me was displayed; but here was no sign of a man in it, except
myself.... When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac
fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat.... “Take care,” he said, “take
care how you cut yourself. It is more
dangerous than you think in this country.” Then seizing the shaving glass, he
went on: “And this is the thing that has done the mischief. It is a foul bauble
of man’s vanity. Away with it!” and
opening the heavy window ... he flung out the glass, which shattered into a
thousand pieces on the stones ... below. (34-35)
The
scene in Deane unfolds in a similar fashion, but this time it is Professor Van
Helsing instead of Harker who witnesses
Dracula’s odd behavior:
Van Helsing: It is strange that you should have so
startled me just now -- for I was looking in the mirror— and the reflection
covers the whole room.
Dracula: Ah the mirror -- it is a foul bauble of man's
vanity .... (Deane and Balderston 24)
Van
Helsing goes on to cut himself while opening a parcel of garlic flowers. This
evokes a strange response from Dracula:
Morris: Oh Professor! You’ve cut yourself!
Van
Helsing: It is nothing -- a scratch. [To
Dracula.] See?
Dracula: Take care -- take care how you cut yourself
-- it is more dangerous than you think! (Deane and Balderston 26)
It
is obvious that this scene has been lifted directly from Stoker’s text, altered
to suit the purposes of the stage play and then reinserted into the plot.
Balderston (who, incidentally, does a better job of incorporating it than
Deane) also adapts Stoker’s original scene:
Van
Helsing: [Looking at himself, touching face, shakes head.] The devil.
Dracula:
Come. [Van Helsing turns suddenly to him and looks back into the mirror.] Not
as bad as that.
Van
Helsing: [Long look in mirror, then turns to Dracula ....] I did not hear you,
Count.
Dracula: I am often told that I have a light footstep.
Van
Helsing: I was looking in the mirror. Its reflection covers the whole room, but
I cannot see...
[Pause.
He turns to mirror. Dracula, face
convulsed by fury, picks up small vase with flowers from stand, smashes mirror
....]
Dracula:[Recovering
composure.] Forgive me, I dislike
mirrors. They are the playthings of man's vanity .... (Deane and Balderston 114)
Also,
as in Deane, Van Helsing cuts his finger. Different from Deane’s version,
however, Balderston’s Dracula actually lunges at Van Helsing when he sees the
blood. This is quite similar to his behavior in Stoker’s text, as is
illustrated above.
Similarly, in Deane (and again in Balderston) Renfield has a much
more crucial role than in Stoker’s novel. In the novel, Renfield, like Dracula,
is afforded little opportunity to interact with the other characters. In his
case, however, it is because he is a patient locked away in an insane asylum.
In order to have him participate in the drama of the novel, the characters must
go to him. On the stage, however, Deane allows Renfield to escape and
participate in the drama more directly. Much of his dialogue is reproduced
verbatim from Stoker’s text. In fact, in one scene in particular Deane
incorporates text from at least three separate sections of the novel (Deane and
Balderston 39-42).
One of the most important elements in Stoker’s plot is the
information that is incorporated into Van Helsing’s speeches to the other
characters. He knows how to deal with vampires and Stoker gives him plenty of
dialogue to impart his wisdom. There are several long speeches that are seldom
interrupted by the other characters. For this reason they do not translate well
to the stage. Either the audience must be subjected to a character with long
monologues or the text is condensed to include only the important points.
Unfortunately for his audience, Deane tended to opt for the former approach. In
Act I, for example, Deane incorporates a great deal of Stoker’s text in a
conversation between Van Helsing and Seward.
Van Helsing gets forty-four lines while Seward gets only twelve (Deane
and Balderston 21-22). As well, early in Act II, Deane gives Van Helsing an
uninterrupted thirty-three line speech (35). Again the speech is lifted
entirely out of Stoker’s text, from a Van Helsing speech that takes three and a
half pages (Stoker 286-290). His approach may have had something to do with the
fact that he played Van Helsing on stage. However, when it comes to editing,
Balderston’s play is another matter entirely.
Not only does Van Helsing have less to say in Balderston’s
adaptation than in Deane’s, very little of what he does say is from Stoker. The
thirty-three line speech from Act II of Deane is absorbed into the end of Act I
of Balderston’s rewrite. The playwright spreads Van Helsing’s knowledge over
several pages in the normal give and take of dialogue. In the process, Stoker’s
text disappears almost completely. Thus Balderston’s adaptation is, on the
whole, twice removed from Stoker. He looks at Stoker’s Dracula through
the filter of Deane. Balderston incorporates most of Deane’s plot, retaining
the drawing-room melodrama as the framework of the story. However, he
completely reworks Deane’s dialogue. Since much of this is actually Stoker’s
dialogue, what had remained of Stoker’s text in Deane’s play disappears almost
completely in Balderston.
In addition to this, Balderston eliminates the extraneous
characters from Deane and Stoker. Since the play does not include any of the
plot from the first half of the novel, Balderston discards the unnecessary
characters from the stage play. Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris disappear
entirely as separate characters and become amalgamated with Harker who then
takes on facets of their personalities and some of their dialogue. Similarly,
Balderston collapses Lucy and Mina into one character, Lucy Seward, who is now
Dr Seward’s daughter. Instead of the young man motivated to help Lucy in the
novel because he is in love with her, Seward is now a middle-aged man motivated
by fatherly concern. The principal characters are reduced from nine in Stoker
to eight in Deane to six in Balderston. Balderston’s adaptation seems to be an
exercise in reduction, but is a much neater and more logical presentation.
Since both playwrights have abandoned Stoker’s text concerning the
conclusion of the drama, the final scene becomes partially their own invention.
Deane’s epilogue, where Dracula is killed, is virtually without dialogue, but
Balderston creates dialogue to accompany the action. Neither scene has any of
the drama and excitement of the final scene in the novel where Dracula is
chased to his death and where Quincey Morris meets an heroic end. Once more
these alterations are dictated by the choice to present the story as a drawing
room melodrama. The stage characters do not go any further than Dracula's lair
in the house called Carfax. In Stoker, they follow the vampire from England
into Eastern Europe by train, horseback and boat. It is clear, then, that only
bits and pieces of Stoker’s text have survived the move from novel to stage
play.
So what has happened to Dracula in this process of
transmission from the novel to the stage? One thing, which is lost immediately
in the transition, is the epistolary narrative structure of the novel. One of
the most important thematic elements of Dracula is the collaboration of
the characters. In the novel the characters put a great deal of effort into
bringing together their information on Dracula’s activities. If they are to
work in tandem, they need all the available facts. Each character, in their
turn, contributes to and is informed by this collaboration. In this way, the
story is told from a multitude of perspectives and in several different forms
(typewritten diaries, phonographic journals, letters, newspaper clippings, a
ship’s log, etc.). Of course, this would be difficult to represent on stage
while simultaneously being true to the novel and also keeping the audience
awake.
Only one piece of the epistolary narrative survives more or less
intact from Stoker to Deane to Balderston -- a newspaper article, which details
the activities of the vampire girl.[iii]
The “original” article appears at the end of chapter thirteen in Dracula.
Since it is a newspaper, it is more easily incorporated into the stage plays.
It is much easier to have a character read the account from this article than
show it in the action on the stage. It
is far more difficult to incorporate other epistles, however, since it would
amount to having the characters sit around reading each other’s diaries as they
do in the novel. The thematic significance of this collaboration would,
unfortunately, have to be sacrificed on the stage.
However, what about other considerations? What about the way the
novel is physically presented? Both Deane and Balderston adapted Dracula
as a drawing-room melodrama. As has been illustrated, this style does not suit
the novel since in it the characters move around over great distances. For
instance, there are scenes in the novel from Transylvania, and from Whitby and
London in England. Within London are several different settings: an insane
asylum, a churchyard, as well as Dracula's various residences. The narration is
also given from trains, coaches, hotels, houses, and boats. Dracula becomes quite limited in its
scope on the stage. In both productions, except for the final scene, the action
moves between two main settings, the drawing room or library and the boudoir of
a single house. Only a limited amount of
the action from the novel can therefore be represented. What remains is either
dropped or altered so that it appears in these two areas. The audience is
unable to witness the opening sequence in Transylvania, which is one of the
best parts of the novel. As well, the final dramatic sequence where Dracula is
killed is lost.
One question remains, then. Are these plays really Dracula
and would Dracula’s author have approved of the Deane and Balderston
adaptations? Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon one’s point of view,
authorial intention has little influence in this case. The author of the
original text had no direct input, since he died long before Deane produced the
first play. Only Deane’s and Balderston’s intentions are at work here and,
without the direct input of the original author, the plays become separate
entities from the novel. The text becomes fragmented like the mirror Dracula
smashes in the story, each one reflecting a different perspective.
Clues concerning what Stoker may himself have intended for a stage
play production can be found in his own adaptation of the novel. There were a
total of five acts, not including the prologue, made up of forty-seven
scenes. Stoker’s was a vast undertaking
that took over four hours to read on the stage. As has been discussed, this
crude adaptation was meant to protect the copyright of the novel from piracy on
the stage and was never done again. Due
to its obscurity, it is unlikely, then, that Deane or Balderston consulted this
adaptation. They had only Stoker’s text and their own agendas to guide them.
They were, above all things, constrained by their medium (i.e. the stage), by
the person who held the rights (Florence Stoker) and they were removed from the
Victorian society that produced Dracula by some twenty years. Dracula
had no choice but to change. For the vampire, there is always a price for
immortality: adapt or die.
Works
Cited:
Deane, Hamilton and John L Balderston. Dracula: The Ultimate, Illustrated
Edition of the WorldFamous Vampire Play. Ed David J Skal. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
Ludlam, Harry. A Biography of Bram Stoker: Creator of Dracula.
London: New English Library, 1977.
Skal, David J. Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula
from Novel to Stage to Screen. New York: Norton, 1990.
--- .Introduction. Dracula:
The Ultimate, Illustrated Edition of the World-Famous Vampire Play. By
Hamilton Deane and John L Balderston. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
Stoker, Bram. The Essential Dracula.
Ed Leonard Wolf. New York: Penguin
Books, 1993.
Notes
[1]For the sake of convenience and to avoid confusion, the Deane and
Balderston play will be cited as Balderston.
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